DeepSeek could raise $7.4 billion amid competition with OpenAI
Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is close to finalizing a deal to raise around $7.4 billion. It could become one of the largest startup funding rounds in China and a major event for the country’s AI industry, which is trying to compete with U.S. players such as OpenAI.
According to Bloomberg sources, the largest investors in the round are technology giant Tencent and battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (CATL). The state-backed National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund is also taking part in the deal, which can be seen as an important signal of support from Beijing.
DeepSeek’s new ambitions
DeepSeek’s initiative shows that Chinese AI companies are seeking to catch up with and overtake their U.S. competitors, which have already attracted huge investor attention and started preparing for public listings.
DeepSeek became known for its technical breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. In 2025, the company introduced a model that, according to market estimates, could compete with Silicon Valley solutions while requiring significantly lower costs.
DeepSeek’s management told potential investors that the company would prioritize fundamental AI research over quick commercialization. Founder Liang Wenfeng said at one investor meeting that he would continue developing open-source AI models and pursue the broader goal of creating artificial general intelligence.
Who DeepSeek competes with
DeepSeek competes with several groups of players at once. In the global market, these include OpenAI with ChatGPT, Anthropic with Claude, Google with Gemini, Meta with Llama and xAI with Grok. Their products compete for the same tasks: answering questions, generating text and code, working with data, agentic scenarios and enterprise AI adoption.
DeepSeek also has strong rivals in China. Alibaba is developing the Qwen family of models, Baidu has Ernie, Tencent has Hunyuan, ByteDance has Doubao, Moonshot AI has Kimi, and Zhipu AI has GLM models. Therefore, DeepSeek competes not only with U.S. AI giants, but also with local companies that have already integrated their AI products into cloud services, search engines, messengers, office tools and business applications.
As a reminder, in early 2025, DeepSeek’s AI assistant overtook ChatGPT in the App Store.
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